Batman: Arkham Oranges Features Punching, Glowering

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Batlike Man, Batlike Man, does slightly similar things to what a bat can. Hits a guy, in the face, catches thieves just like slightly less proficient fighters. Look out! Here comes another origin story for the Batlike Man!

With Rocksteady off making presumably a full-blown necks jenny rayshun Batman game, Arkham Oranges seems to be a sort of fill-in, in the way Assassin’s Creedses have long been doing it. That might be a good thing though – the Arkham games were pretty great for the most part, and if this one can expand upon Arkham City’s openness while hopefully toning down the thoughtless dialogue and ideally ditching the magicky sub-plots, I’ll be happy to jump another e-train to Gotham. Here’s trad. E3 trailer, followed by one of the devs from Warner Bros. Montreal showing more in-game stuffs to the very excitable people at GameTrailers.

Fairly similar then, but a little expanded. Random crimes in progress sounds like a good thing, as long as it doesn’t get too repetitive – ‘oh another guy shaking his fist at someone for 40 seconds’. I’d like each one to feel a least a little worthwhile, and like Batman’s actually doing his dayjob rather than just distracting himself between super-villain punch-ups.

I must say that bringing Joker back in the very next game, even if the clock is rewound, somewhat undermines the conclusion of Arkham City. They should have done a Bowie/Next Day sort of thing with him, rather than risk running him into the ground.

“I must say that bringing Joker back in the very next game, even if the clock is rewound, somewhat undermines the conclusion of Arkham City. They should have done a Bowie/Next Day sort of thing with him, rather than risk running him into the ground.”

If you are unfamiliar with Batman inflicting grievous bodily harm on people in amounts that would easily kill them in real life, but don’t in the story, then you clearly have not read/played/seen much Batman.

Arkham Asylum/City captured the essential Batmanness of Batman so well, is it possible to change it significantly without making it not-Batman? There are areas that need improvement, but the core of sneak and biff was a work of genius that made Batman both an unstoppable fist of Justice and a fragile human allergic to bullets.

I love the first two games and have played them both repeatedly. I’m looking forward to this. But there is a feeling of sameness or even fatigue. I’d imagine if you were lukewarm on the first two games, this might definitely look like more of the same and not appeal.

I like that some new enemies would actually be more skilled, as opposed to just more tough. But if all they do is counter one time, it’s not much of an AI improvement.

There’s a danger of feature creep here, I think. With new bells and whistles (or time sinks, if you prefer) added that don’t add quality to the core gameplay. Things could easily get too bloated, as in Assassin’s Creed.

What would be very welcome is some actual detective gameplay. And not the thin sheen of a puddle that has existed so far. Spotting various clues and figuring them out. If they could get some sort of version of the Sherlock games clue-finding and mystery-solving into this I’d be a happy bat detective wannabee. That’s probably way too much to wish for though.

And hopefully the city actually feels alive, with civilians wandering around. There was plot justification for there being few non-enemy npcs in the first games (strained though it was in the second), there should be none for a non-prisonfied Gotham.

I wouldn’t get your hopes up about a city that feels alive with civilians, aside from a few innocents being roughed up as side missions. It looks like they chose the Christmas Eve setting so they could have an empty city for the Bat and the goons to operate in. Everyone else is home for the holidays, streets empty, stores closed, etc. At least the snow will be a nice change for the outdoor scenes.

As a person who has played through Arkham Asylum twice and who just finished Arkham City for the second time, your comment summed up my feeling pretty well. You also added the idea of more deep detective gameplay which I would find interesting too if they could pull it off properly (not an easy task). I always thought the “detective” parts were quite silly in Arkham City.

Any possibility of playing as Bruce Wayne? I mean, why not? Maybe you can stop crime by advocating for lower wealth differences among the population and a stronger welfare system. That way people on situations of exclusion will not resort to crime that easily.

At first the thought of the Joker not being voiced by Mark Hammill scared and confused me, but then I watched Under the Red Hood and the scales lifted from my eyes. Sadly, it looks like Not-Rocksteady have gone with a Not-Hammill soundalike, which is never good news.

Indeed; there’s lots of room for Joker actors that don’t sound like Mark Hamill in style or voice. Hamill is The Long Halloween Joker, but we’ve had Heath Ledger pull off The Killing Joke with equal effectiveness, and John DiMaggio did a great job in the red hood as a slightly more sane, manipulative Joker.

Sad as I am about Mark Hamill hanging up the green hair and bloodshot eyes, there will be others.

I’m always skeptical of Not-Hamil voices myself, but judging purely from the one line and maniacal laugh heard in the E3 trailer, I think Troy Baker will pull it off well.

Certainly he sounds worlds better than the guy that voiced Joker in the cinematic trailer for Injustice. You could tell his dialogue was being written for Hamil and the character was being animated that way but the guy just sounded like a nondescript crook.

“Batlike Man, Batlike Man, does slightly similar things to what a bat can. Hits a guy, in the face, catches thieves just like slightly less proficient fighters. Look out! Here comes another origin story for the Batlike Man!”

What’s this nonsense!
I demand that alt-text has equal number of syllables! This is a British site, none of that surreal, or godforbid postmodern rubbish here! We east-European peasants have to have to demand some standards from our model countries.